


Worth Saving

by Tarlan



Category: Cube (1997)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Post-Movie(s), Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-02-05
Updated: 2006-02-05
Packaged: 2017-10-20 18:03:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/215614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tarlan/pseuds/Tarlan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>David Worth sank back against the cool metal floor of the cube and waited to die.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Worth Saving

He thought it would hurt far more than it did but maybe it was the shock that kept his body feeling numb. All he knew for certain was that he was dying, and that Leaven was already dead along with their murderer, Quentin. Bitterness filled him, and regret too for he had come so far only to see her fail at the last hurdle, cheated not so much by the Cube for they had figured out its secrets but by the rawness of human nature. At least one of them had made it though. At least all the pain and even the dying had not been completely in vain.

David took another shallow breath then cried out in agony as someone grabbed hold of him. More shrieks filled the cube as the autistic man leapt back in terror, his cries drowning out David's weaker screams. Eventually, the overwhelming pain lessened sufficiently for him to regain his breath and David stared at the man he thought he had saved through pain-filled eyes, horrified to find him still here.

"Kazan? Go!" he whispered harshly. "Go!"

"Promised." He rocked back and forth just a few feet from where David lay.

David felt confused. Promised what? Everything was so unclear now, his mind a fog of increasing pain.

"Promised."

Gumdrops, he thought suddenly. He had promised him gumdrops if he helped them get out of the Cube.

"Can't..." He tried to talk, tried to explain but he felt tired, knowing the blood loss had sapped all his remaining strength.

"Promised," the childlike man stated stronger before reaching out and pulling on David again.

This time he did not scream alongside David and as darkness closed around him, part of David wondered if the Kazan had ceased to care, his damaged mind fully taken up by his determination to see David's promise kept. David came back with a jolt and another harsh cry of pain as Kazan dragged him up and took him to one of the exits from the room, an exit that should have led to safety but now would only lead to another potentially lethal cube, except David was shocked to see the corridor still there. The room must have moved on since he crawled towards Leaven's body for he was almost certain that he had felt the grinding motion beneath his prone body. This made no sense.

He cried out again, the guttural moan torn from his lips as Kazan pushed him through the small doorway, unable to fathom the injuries to David's body. Kazan clambered out behind him before dragging David along the brilliant white, illuminated corridor like a child with a rag doll, leaving a smear of blood in their wake.

Another door lay at the far end and David watched it open, revealing men dressed in sterile white from head to foot. They looked perplexed to see David, eyeing each other nervously even though masks concealed most of their faces but then they grabbed for David as his not-quite-wanted savior dragged him through. The world narrowed down as he heard the autistic man insist yet again that David had made a promise and David wanted to laugh. It had seemed such a pathetic promise at the time, a stupid promise made to coax the autistic genius into helping them escape. It had meant nothing to David and he had not thought of actually honoring it at the time. He had used it as a means of placating the childlike man who contained all the knowledge needed to save Leaven and Kazan himself.

  
David had never entertained the intention of saving himself, knowing he had nothing beyond the walls of the Cube except a continuation of his drab existence. He had spent half his life in a different sort of cube, one that dished out death in slow, boring repetition, day in and day out, and with no glimmer of hope for anything better.

He was trapped in the Cube from the moment he accepted the huge paycheck and started work on the outer skin of what should have been his tomb. He had deliberately stalled on the 'cube' project, completing his work three months earlier but it took a month before he began to wonder about the slowly dwindling number of people trapped in the project with him, their desks untouched and yet seemingly abandoned. He recalled one guy who had worked on the metal composition, deciding what material would be best for breathing life into David's design. Jackson had disappeared over a month ago followed by Matthews and then by some Japanese guy whose name David could never recall.

Perhaps he had courted his own disappearance by making it so easy on *them* to take him as he worked in his cubicle, with his last memory one of darkness falling outside, noticeable only through the tiny slits of windows fifteen feet above his head. When he woke up inside the Cube, his head had been pounding and his body ached as if he had fallen from a height, and perhaps he had. Perhaps they had dropped him head first into the Cube, deliberately separating all the rats in the maze to see how they would fare alone before stumbling upon each other.

He choked back a laugh that morphed into a moan of pain as strangers' hands lifted him onto a medical table.

Perhaps Holloway had been right and there was some purpose to the Cube. After all, they had put a disparate group of people into a death machine with a psychopath. Maybe that was why *they* were surprised to see David, having not expected Kazan to have the presence of mind to save another person.

He turned his head a fraction as Kazan's voice rose in his animalistic whimpering cry of fear and David reached out a hand towards him feeling another surge of that need to protect; a feeling that had shocked him when inside the Cube. Kazan broke away and scrabbled across the floor towards him, grabbing his hand in both of his while that keening wail grew louder.

"Don't... hurt him," David cried but his weakened voice barely carried above Kazan's growing distress, and yet someone must have heard for *they* pulled back. "Gumdrops," David whispered. "Promised him... gumdrops."

One of the white-clad men crouched down next to Kazan. "I have some gumdrops in there."

David saw him indicating towards another exit from this room and felt Kazan's fingers slip away as he was led off with all fear forgotten, murmuring 'gumdrops' over and over.

As the unidentified men began to cut away David's clothing and set up an IV for blood and plasma, the world faded away. His last sight of the brilliant white room was of one man leaning over him, an empty syringe in his hand; a man whose eyes appraised David with mixed emotions of fascination and concern.

****

His eyelids were heavy but he could hear someone calling his name gently.

"David? Wake up, David."

Slowly, he forced open his eyes and tried to focus on the face above him.

Pretty, he thought as the woman's face brightened in a smile. He let his eyes slide away to meet the plain beige walls surrounding. Everything had been white before; a glowing, brilliant white.

"Wh...?" He croaked, only now realizing that his lips were stiff and his throat seemingly blocked with something unyielding.

"Don't try to talk. You have a tube in your throat to help you breathe but the doctor will take it out soon." She smiled again. "I expect you want to know where you are. You are in St. Martins Mercy Hospital."

Hospital?

"You were in an accident. Do you remember?"

He shook his head but regretted the motion instantly. David tried to move and groaned as every muscle in his body protested the action. The slide of a door mechanism drew his attention from his aching body to the doorway; his eyes followed the journey of a stranger across the room, focusing on the man's face as he leaned over David. Yet this was no complete stranger for David had seen his eyes before. The man smiled.

"Do you remember me?"

David stared harder at the man but he recognized only the eyes that held a strangely familiar fascination with him.

"I was with you in the operating theater, before we put you under. We were very concerned for you at the time."

David tried to speak around the tube in his throat, making small choking sounds.

"Ahh yes. Time for this to come out." The man glanced sideways at the nurse, wordless instructions passing between them before the man told him to cough. David squeezed his eyes closed as the tube dragged along his abused airway, drawing in a deep breath as the tube was dropped into a large tray beside David's bed. "Better? No." A hand gripped his shoulder as David opened his mouth to speak. "Don't try to talk right away. Nurse?"

Gratefully, David sucked on the ice chips spooned into his mouth, the melting water soothing his dry, sore throat; he closed his eyes to savor the cool liquid in his parched mouth. From a distance he heard the man tell him to sleep and was surprised when his eyelids refused to open as he tumbled back down into a darkness haunted by death and horror.

Dr. Phillips stepped back from the bed and stared down at the younger man, taking clinical note of the heavy bruising that marred his patient's face. His memory flashed back to the image projected on the screen, watching as Quentin delivered a brutal beating using the heavy boot as a club before opening up the floor panel and shoving Worth through it head first. Worth had landed with a sickening crunch and even Phillips had been surprised when Worth had proved not only to be very much alive but still able to move. The violence had continued as Quentin set his psychotic sights on the one person he saw as not just a threat but as an unnecessary body too. Leaven was just a girl but she was young and pretty, and Kazan had proved far more useful than any had believed once they discovered his mathematical genius.

Phillips grimaced as he recalled how Quentin had verified that Kazan's calculations were correct by throwing Worth into the 'safe' room.

This really had been the most amazing of the study groups sent into the Cube so far, and the only ones out of the one hundred and twenty subjects who had traversed the Cube and found the exit, losing but one of their number along the way through the death traps within the Cube itself. Quentin had killed the others as his fragile hold on reality finally snapped revealing the monster lying within.

Yet of the entire group, David Worth had surprised him most of all.

He had watched the man for several months, assessing his mental state and seeing the lack of spark within him. Here was someone who was slowly suffocating in the 'real' world, worn down by the unchanging gray walls that surrounding him during the day and by the dullness of his life outside of work where his only true connection to the world came through the porn sites he visited on his computer. Of all the subjects, Worth seemed the most resigned to his fate from the moment his eyes opened inside the Cube and Holloway was right when she correctly assessed that his only reason for following the others was to find the right opportunity to confess the part he had played in their abduction. Then, having invited the attention of the _psychopath_ , Worth had accepted the initial attack from Quentin with a stoicism borne out of self-contempt.

Perhaps he had needed the pain to prove he was still alive, Phillips thought.

One of Phillips' colleagues had conjectured that placing Worth inside the Cube would be a colossal waste of time, believing that Worth would display a death wish and take no precautions when climbing into new rooms. Perhaps if he had not been found by Quentin and the others so quickly then he might have gone the same way as Alderson, sliced into small chunks, except the group had found Worth and some how, had given him a purpose he had lacked in the outside world.

The first true surprise came when Worth took on the role of protector for Kazan, offering assurances that would prevent Kazan from being left behind as a liability as they crossed a room where the slightest sound from a human voice would activate deadly spikes. Quentin had forced Worth to go first just to prove it and Worth had not faltered in that task. The second surprise was when he took on the bigger, more lethal police officer to protect Leaven, earning the beating that ought to have maimed or even killed him. After that no one was surprised by Worth's determination to protect the others. Instead, they were rather pleased when Worth bought time for the group to lose Quentin and then when he made the decision to go back for Kazan rather than taking the short walk to safety.

In hindsight, Leaven's death was a shame but Worth's was a tragedy when Quentin caught up with the group. For the first time, Phillips had wanted to end this particular experiment early as he watched Worth slide down the wall clutching his stomach, leaving a thick smear of blood on the metal behind him. Now, he was glad he let it play out to the end as he saw Worth use the last of his strength to save Kazan from Quentin.

It should have ended there, with Worth sinking to the floor, crawling up closer to the fallen girl only to collapse a few feet away, for no one expected Kazan to have the mental capacity to go back into the Cube and search for Worth, let alone carry him through two potentially lethal rooms back to the bridge cube. Yet he had dragged Worth along behind him like a small child treated a beloved teddy bear, unwilling to let go even when Phillips and his colleagues reached for the badly injured man.

Gumdrops.

Though that had seemed to be the main focus for Kazan, Worth's life had hinged on more than just a promise of gumdrops. Somewhere in Kazan's damaged mind a bond had formed between these two men. Where Kazan had pulled back from Quentin right from the start, he had been drawn to Worth, trusting in him almost implicitly from the moment they met. Leaven had trusted and cared for him too, enough to try and convince him to walk to freedom with her and Kazan. Even Holloway had liked and trusted Worth despite her initial paranoia once he revealed his connection to the Cube.

Within his study of the human psyche under extreme stress, Phillips had seen plenty of examples of unusual groups taken from different walks of life learning to work loosely together in order to conquer the Cube but their loyalty to each other only went so far, eventually leading to their deaths. This time he had witnessed the best in human nature as three people, perhaps four if Holloway had not been murdered so soon, formed a tight bond that stood together against the full horror of the Cube.

Yes. Leaven's death had been a shame for he would have liked to have observed further interactions between the three but, as he stared down at David Worth, he realized that all was not lost. For a moment he considered sending both Kazan and Worth back into the Cube but Worth knew its secrets now, negating the value of that particular test. Phillips smiled. In truth, he had nothing new to gain from watching them interact in life and death situations. Perhaps it was time to try a different test and see if Kazan was the key to giving David Worth something to live for.

Phillips leaned across and patted Worth's shoulder affectionately before hurrying away, his mind burning up with fresh ideas that for once, did not involve death and mutilation.

THE END


End file.
